If only the rest of the world could have such problems. Chinese consumer prices were flat from February 2022 to March, even though gasoline and energy costs predictably skyrocketed. According to China’s NBS, gas was up 7.2% month-over-month while diesel costs on average gained 7.8%. Balancing those were the prices for main food staples, especially pork, the latter having declined [...]
For several years now, we’ve been harping constantly and consistently about what’s on the PBOC’s balance sheet; or, really, what conspicuously isn’t in very specific line-item numbers. Briefly, simply, if dollars are being extended into China, as has been claimed over the years, particularly the last few, they’re going to show up on the Chinese central bank’s balance sheet. Specifically, [...]
It’s not necessarily a discrepancy so much as maybe looking at the same thing from a different point of view. China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) reports on, among other things, the widest definition of foreign assets being under its whole national umbrella. Yet, the agency publishes balances denominated not in CNY, either US$’s or SDR’s (hey, they can [...]
My entire premise was to make this mockingly simple. Econometrics demands mathematical precision yet always comes up empty because its calculations, no matter how elegantly complex, proceed from the falsest of subjective assumptions. It won’t matter how awesome the computing power if the thing you’re trying to compute doesn’t work or act the way you believe (because everyone says so [...]
China’s currency had been on fire for seven months straight. Rising nearly in a straight line, from May 27 last year until very early January this year, CNY had gone from a certain plunge into the devastating monetary abyss (unintentional devaluation) to a significant basis for Xi Jinping’s global boasting. This was no ordinary turnaround.The timing of it speaks initially [...]
The Chinese erstwhile dictator Xi Jinping asked the Davos gathering of the superrich, can’t we all just get along? More than a weird juxtaposition, appearing virtually before other virtual attendees, the Communist strongman wanted to make plain his view, therefore China’s, he harbors no desire for a renewal of the Cold War. Though we come from very different places and [...]
Brazil’s Minister of Economy Paulo Geudes told members of the local press last month that the country was on track to lose about 300,000 “formal” jobs in 2020. Though employment growth has slowed there in the second half of the year, as it has worldwide, Geudes was quite proud of his achievement. After all, though hundreds of thousands of Brazilians [...]
Does anyone remember the petroyuan? It doesn’t appear so, though not because the thing disappeared rather due to the fact that it didn’t. It was a really big deal for a time, pretty much all of 2018. What it was supposed to have represented was the dollar’s death knell. Guaranteed, one hundred, no, one thousand percent dead. This was widely [...]
While the world is taking the smallest of baby steps in the right direction, mostly it’s been related to the part of the eurodollar system that everyone can see. Not bank reserves and the Fed’s “money printing”, though you can see them and we’re told to obsess about them those things don’t matter. I mean instead the dollar’s exchange value; [...]
The way you hear it nowadays, the dollar just can’t catch a break. If it’s not a load of “V’s” indicated by some obscure data point (like the otherworldly spike in US home ownership levels), then it is Jay Powell who is clearly gunning for the US currency. He can’t kill it fast enough, having had more than enough of [...]
Stay In Touch